In this summer of COVID-19, even an unexceptional Will Ferrell comedy is better than none at all.

Review of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Cast: Rachel Mcadams, Dan Stevens, Will Ferrell, Natasia Demetriou Director: David Dobkin Duration: 2 h 3 m Available: Netflix

As Will Ferrell movies go, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga ranks somewhere in that vast, grey, paunchy middle area, perhaps wedged just above the waistband of Zoolander 2 but just below the belly button of Kicking and Screaming. If the movie, about an inept Icelandic music duo with dreams of winning the annual Eurovision Song Contest, fails to achieve the inspired lunacy of an Anchorman, it is nevertheless nowhere near as bad as, say, Holmes and Watson.

And maybe that’s all we need, in this summer of COVID-19, when even an unexceptional Will Ferrell comedy is better than none at all.

Ferrell plays Lars, a singer whose childhood dream has been to make it to Eurovision, an international singing competition that, since 1956, has brought European countries together in song.

With its chief claims to fame being the 1974 win by ABBA and Celine Dion’s win in 1988, it is mostly known for its propensity for synthheavy power ballads by preening performers you’ve never heard of. ( The overthe- top silliness of the acts is something the film embraces only half- heartedly, yet it provides most of the film’s gentle chuckles.)

It is in 1974 that Eurovision opens, with Waterloo from the Swedish band ABBA playing on a TV in Iceland, inspiring a young Lars to dream of pop stardom. Fast forward to the present day, with Lars, sporting a mane of Fabio- esque hair, rehearsing with his platonic singing partner Sigrit ( Rachel Mcadams), who, predictably, has always loved him.

Their unrequited romance is a throughline — without it this might be a Saturday Night Live sketch — but it provides more padding than pleasure. A subplot involves the estrangement between Lars and his emotionally withholding father (Pierce Brosnan).

The jokes, such as they are, have more to do with the cheesiness of Lars and Sigrit’s act, known as Fire Saga, and their almost miraculous path from Husavik to Edinburgh, Scotland, where the Eurovision contest is being held.

There, through a fluke involving a boat explosion that kills every other Icelandic contender for the Eurovision slot, Lars and Sigrit find themselves competing in the semifinals against singers much, much more talented than they are.

Surely, there are worse ways to spend time than with Ferrell, in metallic silver eye makeup and a Viking helmet, singing something called Volcano Man. But as over- the- top as that sounds, I can’t help feeling that there isn’t nearly enough of it, and that the actor just isn’t trying very hard. ΠΠ1/2